


To the Ones Who Live There

by the_original_n_chan



Category: Leverage
Genre: Canon Compliant, Don’t copy to another site, Established Relationship, Multi, OT3, Post Season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 11:11:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19440262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_original_n_chan/pseuds/the_original_n_chan
Summary: Eliot realizes that everything is possible. Also, there's music.





	To the Ones Who Live There

_Are you going to Scarborough Fair_

_Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme...._

The tomatoes were coming along well, despite the fact he’d been out of town for two weeks on a job and had had to hire someone to do the watering. They were still a ways from being ripe, but the plants were loaded with fruit, enough that he had plenty to harvest green for pickling. (Sweet pickles or chutney—both were tempting, but the pickles had won out for now. Maybe chutney next weekend? With a lamb curry? Hm.)

His attention was split between recipe planning and snipping basil for the pizza he’d been badgered into making when Parker plopped down next to him.

“What’re you singing?” she asked. It took a moment to register that he actually _had_ been singing under his breath, words alternating with humming.

“You’ve never heard ‘Scarborough Fair’?” he asked. When she shook her head, he smiled a little. He’d mostly stopped being surprised by the things Parker knew or didn’t know. Laying the bunch of herbs on top of the tomatoes in the bucket, he leaned in toward her. “It’s an old song. See, this guy, he’s sending a message to the fair, to a woman there who used to be his one true love. And he lists off all these impossible things he wants her to do, and if she does them all, then she can be his true love again.” 

Parker wrinkled her nose. “Wow. He sounds like a jerk.” 

“Heh.” Eliot got up off his knees and shifted over a few feet to the oregano. Parker didn’t even bother to stand, instead crab walking after him. “There’s a version where the woman sends a message back to the guy, saying, ‘yeah, okay, first _you_ do all these impossible things for me, and then I’ll do the things you’re asking me to do.’ Guess you could say it’s a complicated relationship.” Too complicated for him, that was for sure. Way too much bullshit to put up with, and for what?

“Why do you like it?” Parker asked, coming up sideways on his thoughts. 

“Didn’t say I liked it. It’s just a song. It got stuck in my head.” He could feel himself shutting down, and he breathed deep and slow, focusing on the green stem between his fingers. Parker and Hardison, he could let those two in. Not into the darkest places, the ones he never wanted them to know, but into his life, his past—his heart, behind walls he’d spent more than a decade building. Maybe someday he wouldn’t even have to fight himself to do it.

“I learned it when I was a kid, just starting to play the guitar,” he said. _Snip_ , went the scissors. _Snip. Snip._ “My mom liked it. It was one of her favorite songs. Though I don’t think she ever actually listened to the lyrics. She just liked how it sounded.”

He hadn’t really thought much about the words either, tell the truth. He’d been young, and dumb in the ways that most kids were, and too focused on showing off his new skills to bother trying to find some meaning behind the nonsense. He could’ve been singing “la la la” for all he’d cared. 

It wasn’t until years later, sometime after she’d died, that he’d listened to the song again, the Simon and Garfunkel version—really listened to it, closely enough to hear the words of the counterpoint, the second set of lyrics shadowing the first. He’d been between deployments, and nearly out of illusions by then, and hearing them sing about the cruelty and futility of war only made him feel called out, angry, fed the bitterness growing thick, choking roots inside him. He was too far down that road to turn back, he’d thought then. He couldn’t have imagined how much farther down he could go.

“You know,” Parker mused, “we do impossible things all the time.” She reached out toward one of the fat bees humming on the stalks of English lavender.

“Don’t poke the bees unless you want to get stung,” he warned.

“They’re fuzzy,” she said in protest or explanation, or maybe both. Honestly, it was like gardening with a toddler. With a huff, he cut one of the flowering stalks that didn’t have any bees on it and handed it to her.

“Smell this,” he said. She gave it a wary sniff, twitched in reaction, then smelled it more deeply, making a wordless, considering sound.

“Can you eat this?” she asked.

“It’s edible, but I don’t think you’d like it right off the plant. You want, I can make some lavender lemonade.”

She squinted at him suspiciously. “There’ll be sugar in it?”

He hid his fondness behind a sigh. “Yes, Parker. There’ll be sugar. Plenty of sugar.” Hitching closer to her, he brushed his hand across the tops of the plants to shoo the bees, then fingered carefully through the stalks. “Here, for using fresh lavender, you want a stem where the flowers are mostly open. See, like this.” She bent forward to inspect the one he was showing her, her sun-warmed hair falling in between them, her shoulder brushing against his, and who would have thought at the beginning that the three of them would end up like this? Out of the pasts that had made them, on the other side of so many jobs that should have left them dead or in prison, through chance and risk and change.

Yeah. So many impossibilities. But Parker was right. They’d accomplished them all together.

“Eliot!”

He was just sitting minding his own business when Parker came swooping in out of nowhere, snatched his magazine out of his hands and tossed it over her shoulder, then shoved his guitar into his arms instead. “Play the song!”

He didn’t know what to do except stare at her. “What—what song?”

“The one about the guy and the fair. From the garden.” When he didn’t respond, she prodded, “A couple of weeks ago?”

He finally got what the hell she was talking about, and he scowled. “Parker, I don’t know how to play it. I don’t remember.”

“Sure you do! You remember everything.” Parker dropped to the floor and sat cross-legged, all of her attention fixed on him like he was a laser grid about to turn on.

He did more or less remember everything, which was a mixed blessing if ever there was one. No other excuse was coming to mind, so he reluctantly set himself to tuning. Parker and Hardison had talked him around to buying the guitar a month or so back, which he’d done mostly in self defense, because if he hadn’t then Hardison would’ve just bought him whatever Hardison thought was best, and no amount of internet research could ever replace feeling the weight and resonance of the instrument, how it settled against him, the way the neck rested in his hand. Testing out the action and the intonation, feeling the guitar’s tone speak to him, thrumming in his heart and down his bones. He’d messed around with it a little since then, usually when the others were out, but this would be the first time he’d actually played for one of them.

There was no reason for him to have come down with a case of nerves. Yet here he was, almost as jittery as he’d been before going onstage in Memphis. He’d been a lot less nervous performing for his mom.

He fingered a few notes, feeling his way into the melody, testing it against how he remembered it. It sounded okay, and he went back to the beginning, started playing the song for real. He made it through the instrumental intro all right, but he decided to repeat it before bringing in the words, to help settle himself into the song.

And as he did, the pure, quivering notes of a violin slid into the wake of the first measures. He jerked his gaze up—Hardison was standing in the bedroom doorway, his lips curved and his eyes sparkling with silent laughter as his bow dipped and rose. He’d taken up the counter melody, threading it behind and through Eliot’s playing, now in harmony, now filling in the empty spaces, their instruments working together to create something whole. And between them, Parker sat with her eyes closed and her head tilted back, her face alight with listening.

He hadn’t even known that Hardison _had_ a violin. And when the hell had he been practicing? But the questions fell away, unimportant. Because in that moment, everything was clear and simple, and anything was possible if it was the three of them. That was all that mattered.

Smiling, Eliot bowed his head, acknowledging the sweet ache of how much he loved them. Then he took a breath and began to sing.

_...Remember me to the ones who live there_

_Because they both are the true loves of mine_

**Author's Note:**

> Headcanon: Eliot pretty much has an eidetic memory, which is part of how everything’s so “distinctive” for him (the other part is his mad observation skills). It also includes him being able to recreate basically any recipe as long as he’s done it once and, in this story, to perform a song he hasn’t played since he was a kid. Unfortunately, considering some of the things he’s seen and done…it’s not such a great gift to have.
> 
> If you’re wondering what their duet sounds like, it’s a little bit like this bluegrass version of “Scarborough Fair,” the early part before the fiddle takes the lead: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_Kwld8NhWw>. (They’d have to practice a lot more to be able to switch off like that! But feel free to imagine them doing it. ^_^ )


End file.
